The Basics |
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Summarizing the Winemaking Process |
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Ever wonder about the steps that a winemaker goes through to take grapes and create wine? This
article will give you an abbreviated description of the entire process. It all starts with the grapes. As grapes mature on the vine, the winemakers will closely monitor their progress and when they're considered ready, it's time for the harvest. The grapes are quickly picked and placed into huge containers. Next, it's time for some quality assurance. Basically, this means that a small group of personnel will look through the grapes by hand (usually on some sort of conveyer belt) and remove the ones that don't meet the standard. At the end, the good grapes remaining will be destemmed, usually by a machine. Now, it's time for the crush. You've probably seen people in the movies on or TV crushing the grapes by stepping on them with their bare feet. Although this might still occur in some wineries out there, for the most part this is now done with machines. At this point in the process, the most significant difference between the making of red and white wines occurs. When making red wines, the crushed "must" with the juice, seeds, pulp, skins and perhaps stems is loaded into a tank to prepare for the next step. When making white wines, only the juice is loaded into the tank. So, that requires the skins of the grapes to be removed, followed by a pressing of the grapes to separate the juice from the pulp and seeds. Only the juice is fremented in whites because the skins and seeds would make the wine far too tannic to be consumed. Now, the red must or the white juice is ready for fermentation. Although some winemakers will use only the natural yeasts at this point, most will add ambient yeasts to drive fermentation and ensure more dependable and interesting results. Fermentation can occur in either wooden barrels or stainless steel tanks; it all depends on the flavors and bouquet that the winemaker is trying to achieve. As fermentation proceeds when making red wine, the skins will rise to the top in the form of a large "cap." In order to keep the ingredients mixed together so that the juice in fully exposed to the skin, the winemaker will either "punch down" the cap using some sort of paddle or "pump over" the cap, using a hose to suck the wine from the bottom of the tank and then pumping it on top of the cap to break it up. Obviously, this is not required of white wine since there's no cap to deal with. Then, as fermentation nears its conclusion, maloactic fermentation ("malo") can be initiated to alter the acidity of the wine, thereby softening its texture. This can be done with both red and white wines, though it happens more with reds to control the acidity and bring the wine into balance. At the completion of the fermentation process, the process differs again between making reds and whites. On the red side, it's time to separate the wine from the rest of the must. First, some juice will freely flow out of the tanks once the door is opened; that's called "free run" juice. Then, the must is pressed to get the rest of the wine; this is called "press" juice. These two types of juice are then combined to prepare for the next step. When making white wine, all that's left in the tank post-fermentation is wine and the lees, which are the used up yeast cells. In order to impart more complexity and flavor to the wine, sometimes the juice is keep in contact with the lees for a set amount of time before separating them. Otherwise, the wine is separated from the lees right away. White wines may also go through cold stabilization, which helps eliminate potential crystals from forming later in the bottle. Now it's time to barrel the wines to age. Some white wines will not be aged, but many will be placed into toasted oak barrels to give the wine superior flavors and bouquets. The hints of vanilla, butterscotch, caramel, smoke, burnt toast, cinammon and many other essences that you get in good wines are all due to aging in oak barrels. Finally, the wines can potentially be filtered, but of course the end of the road is the bottling. The winemaker tops each bottle with a cork or screwtop, slaps on a label and the process is complete. Most importantly, the wine is ready to drink! |
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